


In the heat of the moment

by nishiki



Series: Thistle and Weeds [6]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Accidents, Family, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Five is being a good brother, Gen, Introspection, Klaus is an idiot, Sibling Bonding, and so is ben
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-04-10
Packaged: 2020-01-11 00:38:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18419228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nishiki/pseuds/nishiki
Summary: When Klaus has an accident at the house, Five and Four discover a new power.





	In the heat of the moment

**January 2020**

The day had started peacefully enough, which was probably a bad sign anyway in this house. Five would admit, if asked, that there was the possibility that he might be a little paranoid ever since the scheduled day of the apocalypse came and went without the world going up in flames. Maybe he would even feel inclined to agree with Klaus of all people. Letting go of the apocalypse was hard - perhaps even impossible. After all, the thought about this event had dominated his entire life and now that it was not happening … Well, what was he without it?

A junkie without his drugs.

It was also a fact that Five didn't know what to do with all this time he got on his hands now. Everyone else was continuing with their own shit. Right now, Allison and Luther were in L.A. to visit Claire. Diego had started up a small business as a bounty hunter for the police, not willing to go back to the police academy and become a proper detective. Vanya was making her career in the orchestra and would soon become famous without a doubt. And Klaus … Well, Klaus was still fighting with his sobriety and stayed home most of the time because he wouldn't trust himself out there in the real world with all its temptations.  He had started an online art course at the local college though.

Only he didn't know what to do with himself. He should focus on his education, he assumed. Not that he needed school but he should pursue a degree, maybe convince someone to let him go to college already. He felt oddly left behind. He felt stranded in the middle of the ocean.

_ CRASH! _

Of course, the peace and quiet would sooner or later be shattered. He jumped from his spot in the library straight into the front hall from where the sound had come. First, he had been sure that he would find the chandelier on the ground again after it had just been repaired. Instead, he found his brother, Klaus, dangling from the chandelier, kicking helplessly with his long legs.

»What the fuck, Klaus?« 

His first instinct was to teleport up to help Klaus but then he decided against it. Since Klaus had somehow managed to get up there he could probably find a way to get down there by himself as well, right? Not that he would care. A fall from that height would probably not kill his brother anyway and if it would … Well, Five could always claim that he had been somewhere else in the house and hadn't heard the commotion. 

»Oh, funny that you’d ask!« Klaus replied from his precarious situation up at the chandelier as he tried to sound as jovially as possible. »You see, Ben and I were training-«

»Playing!« Ben shot from upstairs where he was hovering near the banister. By now, Klaus had become quite good in materializing their brother and even making him corporal without much effort. »You were playing!« 

»Shut up, Bentacles!« Klaus shot back at their dead brother. »We were training!  _ Training _ , Five!«

»Okay … let's just act as if I was taking the bait here. What exactly were you trying to train?« 

»You know I would really like to discuss this with you, dear brother mine, but maybe in a more comfortable setting?«

»He thought it would be a good idea to throw a football through the house and make me catch it.« Ben finally called from the banister. »And then when I threw it back he was determined to catch it and jumped over the banister and told me to catch  _ him _ !« 

»What good are those tentacles even for, Benji?« Klaus called from his current predicament in distress.

»You know that it doesn't work like that!«

»Well, you could have at least tried!« Klas snorted. Five could already see his grip on the chandelier slip. If he would fall from this high he would probably survive as long as he wouldn't pull the chandelier with him but he would have at least a few broken bones and would be in need of a trip to the hospital.

»Can you try and get him?« Five finally turned to Ben as he looked up to where the ghost of his brother kept guard over the situation at hand. Ben seemed uneasy at the idea of using his powers on Klaus as if he wouldn't quite trust them. 

Of course, he didn't trust them. 

He remembered Ben being terrified of the monsters in his chest back then when they had all been so little and had no idea of the horrors to come some day in the future. He remembered consoling Ben after missions when he had been forced to unleash the beast and he even remembered consoling Klaus one or two times when he had been pushed aside by his siblings to just be the lookout again and again. Just like Vanya, Klaus had been pushed aside and ignored in many regards in their younger years. No wonder he had started acting out at some point. 

»Benny come on!« Klaus yelled over at his brother and Ben gave an uncomfortable shrug.

»I can try!« He replied. »But don't come for me if it won’t work! So you better focus, Punk!« Klaus just waved at him. 

It was true, these days it seemed hardly an effort for Klaus to keep Ben corporal. It was so weird to see Ben walking through these halls again as if nothing had ever happened. Of course, it had been a little odd for the public after the Umbrella Academy had announced its return as a complete team of seven members before Klaus had manifested their dead brother and caused uproar amongst the reporters as he single-handedly proved the existence of ghosts that day.

Ben focused before he carefully unleashed one tentacle of the nightmarish eldritch creature inside of him. Five could watch how it became more solid the more Klaus seemed to focus on Ben. He watched how the thing curled around Klaus’ waist and with a bit hesitation, Klaus let go of the chandelier, the tentacle around his midsection holding him securely in the air.

»See?« Klaus cheered and threw his arms in the air. »It's so fucking disgusting I love it, Benny!«

That was when everything turned to shit and the spell seemed broken. For just an instant, Klaus lost control and the tentacle around him and Ben were gone from sight. Klaus fell before either Five or Klaus knew what was going on. Klaus let out a shrill little screech and then, suddenly, his fall was stopped mid-air. Not by Ben’s tentacles, though. Klaus just floated in the air a few feet above the ground.

»Holy shitballs!« Klaus shrieked as he just hung there as if it would be completely normal.»What the hell are you doing, Five?«

»That’s not me!« He exclaimed right away, almost by instinct as if having another power was an insult to his pride. »I’m not doing anything! That's you! You are doing that, Klaus!« 

»What? No! I’m not … Oh, Jesus fucking Christ you are right!« He squealed above Five, suddenly less terrified than before and rather amused and excited by his new power as he gingerly tried moving in the air and making a somersault. »Look at me, Five!« Klaus laughed. »Oh my God, that's so cool I can fly!« 

»You can levitate that's something very different!« Five huffed and crossed his arms. He couldn't deny that he was surprised, to say the least, and perhaps a bit jealous that Klaus was showing so much potential all of the sudden now that he was clean for almost a year. 

»Oh, you are just jealous!« Klaus laughed up in the air as he did another somersault. 

»Get down now! We can practice your new skill later, it's too dangerous this way! You are too high in the air!«

»Oh stop being such a party pooper! Look, I am perfectly fine up here, right Benji?« To Five, Ben was still invisible but Klaus looked in the direction of where he has last been standing before he let out another laugh. »You are  _ both  _ such party poopers!«

»If you fall from this height you might break a bone or two!« Five scolded.

»You sound exactly like our dear dead brother up there!« Klaus waved and suddenly Ben was standing at the banister again with a deep frown on his face. 

»Five is right, Klaus! We don't know how stable this new power is and you should-«

It was then that Klaus, using two powers at the same time, lost control over both at once and plummeted to the ground without any kind of warning. Five wasn’t fast enough to react and then it was too late as Klaus crashed into the ground with a very loud very audible and very much distinct crack of bones.

Klaus had broken his leg. It was not much of a surprise, of course. Some people who didn't know his brother would probably assume that he would be quite the crybaby when he got hurt. The truth was quite the opposite, actually. Klaus was the type of person who bared his teeth and breathed through the pain. He had a high tolerance for pain to begin with and still as he had realized that his poor left leg had snapped like a twig, he had screamed out in agony.  

Five had watched how Grace had taken care of her useless number four after Five had managed to bring him to the infirmary. Ben was of no help for them, of course, because Klaus was too preoccupied with his own pain to focus on his powers. Grace had made quick work of fixing his leg after assessing the damage. Of course, she hadn't given him anything for the pain. They had a very strict no drugs policy when it came to Klaus and that included painkillers of any kind so poor Klaus’ only chance was to clench his teeth and take it all with a pale face and bloodless lips. Five had almost felt tempted to hold his hand. He didn't, though. They would both be terribly embarrassed later if he would. 

»You are a class A idiot, you know that, right?« Five sighed later as they sat in the living room. Well,  _ he  _ was sitting on one of the armchairs and Klaus was lying with his broken leg propped up on a few pillows on the sofa. He could almost feel the pain radiating from Klaus. He had thrown up twice since the initial injury and had a bucket waiting at his side. Almost he felt sorry for him. Diego would probably give him hell later when he would see what had happened.

»I know.« Klaus moaned and laid his left arm over his eyes as if that would help him in any way. »I live a lot longer with me than you, after all.«

»Well, that is not true and you know that.« Five mumbled. »We were adopted on the same day, after all.« Or bought, he should say. After all, their father had bought them off their parents, right? There was no way around it, no way to sugarcoat that. 

The old man had bought him like one would buy a dog or a cat or some piece of furniture and their mothers had sold them all away without hesitation. Sometimes he wondered how he was supposed to feel about that. He had never had wasted much time with thoughts like these. He didn't know who his mother was and it didn't matter, in the end. Still, now that he was without a purpose, he felt himself allowing thoughts like these more often than not. Had his mother ever regretted selling him to an eccentric billionaire?

He remembered a day when he had heard a young Mexican lady talk frantically at the door with his father. They had been around the age of four or five, he guessed and his other siblings had been somewhere else in the house. Only Five had heard the woman cry at the door and he had known right then and there, as he had seen the woman in the doorway, that she was Diego’s mother. 

The same woman who had sold her son away for a few dollars had come crying to Reginald about it.

Later, Five had realized that this woman hadn't come to get Diego back but to get more money out of the old geezer. And there had been other women like her over the course of the last thirty years. Women who talked to the press and gave interviews and claimed to be their mothers. 

He remembered Klaus staring at the rabbit ear TV in the kitchen as a German woman in her late twenties had cried on some talk show about how Reginald Hargreeves had stolen her child. He remembered how poor naive little Klaus had screamed at his father because of it. A week later it had been revealed that the woman on the talk show had been an imposter, not even German at all. Out there so many people had tried to cash in and make a profit of them. No wonder dad had locked them all in this house for so long. They were valuables, after all, of more worth than diamonds.

»Earth to Five!« He almost flinched at the sudden loudness of Klaus’ strained voice.

»What?«

»I asked if you could get me something to drink. You know, since your poor disabled brother is in pain?« Five rolled his eyes as Klaus flashed him his best puppy dog eyes and thought that it would have any effect on his brother. 

Still, with a sigh, Five zapped into the kitchen and only seconds later he zapped back to Klaus with a glass of water before slumping down on his chair again. »You know, if I wouldn't know it any better, brother dearest, I would say you are brooding over something. But,  _ of course _ , that's not your thing, right?« Even in pain, he had enough energy to be annoying. 

Klaus had a way with words and with people. That was no secret. Out of all the siblings, Klaus had always been the most empathetic one and the easiest one to forget about despite his flamboyance and wildness and his craving for attention. He was the embodiment of the middle child as he once so cleverly remarked upon. And because of those traits, it was actually very easy to talk to him, even for someone like Five who was, out of all seven of them, the most reserved. It was easy to tell Klaus one’s darkest secrets and not feel judged by the recovering drug addict. 

Then again, it was hard to feel judged by someone who once waxed their ass with chocolate pudding. 

»I want to ask you something.« 

»The make it quick before I can't hear you over the sound of my screaming. I feel like I am going through labor with at least three babies.« 

»Have you always been such a sissy?«

»Was that your question?« 

Five sighed another deeply annoyed sigh and wished Ben would be visible right now. Maybe he could have led a proper conversation with him instead. The way Klaus looked at him and not around the room, however, told Five that Ben wasn't even in the room now. He was probably tired of hearing Klaus cry about his leg. 

»How did you move on after the drugs?«

»What do you mean?«

»Well, the drugs were your main focus in life for at least fifteen years, right? So much so that they became part of your identity, part of what made you you.«

»Okay first of all: Ouch. I was always more than just the drugs, okay? But I think I know where this is going … it's either that or I am hallucinating because of the excruciating pain I’m in.« Five rolled his eyes but Klaus had his arm over his eyes again and didn't see it. »Listen, Five, I know I called you a junkie once when this whole apocalypse thing didn't happen. But I know how hard it is to move on from something that dominated your entire life and thinking for such a long time. Granted it was only like fifteen years for me and a whole lot more for you but … Well, I don't know what to tell you, Sport.«

»Oh, wow, you are a fountain of wisdom as always.«

»Hey … not fair. I am hurt and I can't think straight right now.« Klaus moaned. »No … What I’m saying is … I know how you feel, okay? After quitting the drugs it was hard for me too. I was no longer the loveable junkie of this family. No longer  _ crazy  _ Klaus - Well, I am still crazy, but in a good way. And suddenly my routine was gone and everything I had built my life around. Being back here and having a duty as a member of this team helped me to stay sober and focus on more important stuff. There is no recipe for how you deal with something like this, brother dearest. You need to find your north star.«

»Are you sure you're not high?«

Klaus snorted. »Have you never listened to good old Mr. Karlson? Or to Dad?«

»Have you?«

»Well, I have heard enough to know that it's important for the development of one’s own mind and character to evaluate who one wants to be in life and that can only be done when one finds their north star and allows that star to guide them through life.«

»And what's yours?«

»I’m still searching, I guess.« Klaus shrugged pathetically. »That's why I am occasionally dangling from a chandelier, I guess. I know that I want to help people with my powers. But I also know that I still have a long way ahead of me now. You should try to figure out what you want to do with your life. Maybe you should go back to what you wanted to do when you were younger - before you left, I mean.«

»I wanted to become a detective.«

»Well, that's a start, I guess. You don't need to decide all this right now. Unlike the rest of us poor bastards, you have been granted a second chance to grow up into a healthy emotionally stable adult, Five. Use it and find out what you want to do with your new life.« Only then did Klaus take his arm off his eyes and looked at him again. He seemed sincere enough. »But before you do that it would be very cool if you would help me find out what more I can do.«

It was later that same day as Five found himself a quiet moment again while his siblings were listening to Klaus’ tragic little story with Ben being as unhelpful as he could possibly be after Klaus had managed to materialize him again in the room. Just like expected, Diego had adopted the role of mother hen again even though he would never admit it. As he was watching his siblings like this, minus Luther and Allison, he thought that he didn't want a second chance of a childhood. He didn't want to see his siblings grow old and grey and then die long before it would be his time. They had all been born on the same day and they should end it this way too - preferably at old age. 

He wanted to find a way to meet his siblings at the same point in all their lives. He would gladly exchange his new found childhood for being thirty and just as miserable and cranky as the rest of those lunatics. From where he was sitting in one corner of the living room, he suddenly caught Klaus’ eyes over Diego's fretting. His brother winked at him and Five had a hard time to ignore the warmth spreading through him.


End file.
